MA Top 30 Professional: Hanako Yamaguchi

Artistic Producer and Consultant

From 1989 to 2020 Hanako Yamaguchi was director of music programming for Lincoln Center with a portfolio including the Great Performers Series and the Mostly Mozart and White Light festivals. The classical music scene changed radically in those years, as did Lincoln Center’s presenting priorities. Yamaguchi’s did not, however, and for the last few years she has been focusing on legitimate classical arts projects as an independent producer and consultant. Clients have included the Boston Celebrity Series, WQXR, New York’s Little Island, and more. Currently she is producing cellist Alisa Weilerstein’s “Fragments,” a six-part project built around the 36 movements of Bach’s solo cello suites with 27 newly commissioned works. Now in its third season, “Fragments 2,” comes to Carnegie Hall January 21 and tours thereafter.

Yamaguchi reflects on the changes in classical music presenting. “When I began at Lincoln Center,” she says, “the focus was on wellknown artists, celebrities. Many musicians, many orchestras could fill 2,000 seats.

“But of course, life is change.

“We shifted our focus to repertoire, single composers. We had Colin Davis and the London Symphony in a complete Sibelius symphony cycle. We added a film, some chamber music, and discussions to create context. We did that around a lot of composers.”

In the late 1990s came a multi-disciplinary series titled “New Visions.” British theater director Simon McBurney and the Emerson String Quartet explored Shostakovich’s final years. Director Peter Sellars staged Bach cantatas featuring mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson.

In the mid-2000s the focus shifted to audience experience—Mostly Mozart concerts with audience members sipping wine at cabaret tables. “The goal was to create more intimacy.”

Dearest to her heart, though, was the White Light Festival, which ran for 10 years beginning in 2010. Programs were 80 minutes long with no intermission. The idea was to immerse audiences in sights and sounds, prompting, says Yamaguchi, “contemplation, transcendence, ecstasy.”

Those same prompts are vital to Weilerstein’s “Fragments.” Each of the six segments represents a weave of Bach and new music with little demarcation among composers.

“Unfortunately in classical music,” said Yamaguchi, “we feel the need to think too much. ‘Who is this piece by? What is this piece?’ This project invites you to come and experience music without all of that. It’s not easy at first to turn off your brain. But about half-way in, you finally let go and just let the music wash over you. We really want you to just listen.”